Jersey City Board of Education Decides Not to Vote on Epps Contract

By • Aug 11th, 2010 • Category: Blog, News, Politics

The Jersey City Board of Education (BOE) has punted on its scheduled vote to approve a controversial new three-year contract for superintendent Charles Epps.

Instead, the BOE decided — after hearing public testimony at its meeting this evening — to first have county superintendent of schools Timothy Brennan approve the contract. According to JCI‘s Suzanne Wulach, who is currently at the meeting, the vote will most likely be scheduled for one of the BOE’s next two regular meetings, either August 26 or September 23.

The proposed agreement would nullify Epps’ previous contract, which isn’t set to end until next summer, and would instead create a new three-year deal for the superintendent that would begin, retroactively, on July 1 of this year and ends June 30, 2013.

The proposal calls for no salary increases for Epps during the entire three-year term, and it does not increase his current base salary of $268,200. It includes 22 vacation days, 15 sick days, 5 personal days and an annuity of $10,000 each year, as well as a district-owned car, and a driver for official business.

Proposed Epps Contract

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is the founding editor of the Jersey City Independent; he now works for a public-policy nonprofit in Trenton.
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  • Geoffrey Elkind

    For a compensation package of this magnitude, accountability is missing.

    Unfortunately, this contract does nothing to directly tie the Superintendent’s compensation to his performance. In this respect, the Superintendent remains unaccountable for his performance under the contact despite the fact that Section 5 speaks to an annual review and evaluation against “reasonable and attainable goals and objectives”.

    Where are the incentives to work to improve performance? What are the penalties for failing to attain defined goals and objectives or if actual school performance declines year-on-year.

    This is a major shortcoming that should be addressed.

    Even if this contract is ultimately approved, the ball will then be in the hands of the Board of Education members to set objective, measurable and meaningful performance metrics and goals, which the Superintendent should be personally accountable for. The specific benchmarks and actual performance results should also be made public each year. This would at least move things toward some level of transparent accountability in the event the contract is not redrafted.